Toyota, Audi showcase self-driving cars at CES – no sign of Google

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The latest iterations of the self-driving car have come to CES. Audi and Toyota are displaying cars that are self-driving at times, and showcase the building-block technologies available today that can assist drivers, especially on limited access roads or on crowded city streets. Audi is showing the Audi Pikes Peak TTS research car that has climbed Pikes Peak, and Toyota is exhibiting a gear-laden Lexus LS research vehicle. The building blocks help avoid accidents in urban areas; on limited access highways, they guide, correct and warn. Both automakers are also trying to control expectations for anywhere, anytime self-driving cars. Lexus likens its robocar to a “co-pilot” while Audi talks about “piloted driving,” as in auto-pilot functions on a plane.

Toyota/Lexus Advanced Active Safety Research Vehicle

Toyota’s Lexus division tricked out a Lexus LS sedan (pictured above) as an Advanced Active Safety Research Vehicle with multiple sensors to “observe, process and respond to the vehicle’s surroundings.” In other words, it could be a self-driving car, but for now Lexus sees the components as assisting in specific tasks. Mark Templin, Lexus general manager, sounded the usual let’s-not-get-ahead-of-ourselves warning: “We believe the driver must be fully engaged … a driverless car is just a part of the story. Our vision is a car equipped with an intelligent, always-attentive co-pilot whose skills contribute to safer driving.” Lexus calls it the Integrated Safety Management Concept as well as the Advanced Active Safety Research Vehicle.

In Japan, there’s more emphasis on automating or assisting driver safety in crowded cities. What’s on the CES vehicle could be enough for autonomous driving with more software and testing. The tools include:

Much of the Toyota/Lexus research is at the company’s nine-acre Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) proving grounds in Susona City, Japan. As you might guess from a test track the size of nine football fields, it replicates urban roads, not interstate highways. Toyota also does R&D in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Audi shows piloted parking, piloted driving

Audi has already shown it can get a self-driving car packed full of electronics up the 152 turns of Pikes Peak (12.5 miles or 20 km) in 27 minutes. That’s about 28 mph or 45 kph. Not bad for a road with thousand-foot dropoffs and no guardrails. At CES, it’s showing off piloted driving and piloted parking. In a statement, Audi says, “The term ‘piloted’ is used advisedly, as Audi envisions motorists enjoying the convenience of allowing the car to handle mundane stop-and-go driving conditions, for example, while still being able to take control of the car when needed. In this way, the technology is similar to auto-pilot systems found on jetliners.”

Audi has most of the adaptive cruise and lane departure warning features found in the Lexus and the BMW-Cadillac-Mercedes competition. It’s also talking up piloted parking. Where Americans are learning to like the convenience of hands-off parallel parking, Audi is taking that one step further at CES. By that, Audi means you hop out of the car and it finds a space in a parking lot and eases in.

VW (Audi’s parent) worked with Stanford University on the parking project; the Pikes Peak car was also a joint project with Stanford. Others have researched automated parking including MIT, Stanford’s east coast rival, and BMW, which has shown a prototype car that drives into the garage, stops, and powers down, all after the driver and passengers have gotten out. The advantage is significant in Europe and Japan with smaller garages that are a tight fit even if the garage isn’t used for storage along the front and sides.

Audi gets the second driverless car permit in Nevada

Audi also has been awarded the second license for road-testing autonomous vehicles on public roads in Nevada, after Google. Nevada is the ideal testbed for self-driving cars. Once you’re a few miles outside Vegas, there are miles and miles of uncrowded roads. It’s also close to California and the automaker R&D facilities there, and most of the state is snow-free year-round. Although the permit is for autonomous driving cars, for the most part there’s still a driver behind the wheel to take control in case something goes awry.

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